> [A] small
> collection of living organisms forms a fully self contained system
> capable of turning sunlight and raw feedstocks into a very wide
> variety of products. One might say that all the components that do
> this are "one-offs", but so what?

Indeed. *All* the variegated components. Tens of thousands of exactly
specified genes, enormous numbers of precisely engineered proteins. Nothing
mysterious about that, just vast depth of exploratory history. Oh, and the
things these tools make are rather mostly squishy, surely not by accident. I
wouldn't want to fly in one, or even climb up one to orbit.